EarthSonic Futures
In the summer of 2025, EarthSonic-in collaboration with Roland-teamed up to empower the next generation of climate-conscious music makers across the UK. Together, we gave away 9 exclusive equipment bundles to young people who wanted to explore sound in a new way, through the world around them. We called on young people and artists who are passionate about music, the environment, and storytelling.
The winners received their bundles of equipment at the Roland store on 3 July, 2025 as part of the launch of TAKKUUK, a new audio-visual film installation by EarthSonic. The equipment was handed to them by Ed O’Brien from Radiohead and Ruth Daniel, CEO and Artistic Director at In Place of War, during a special moment that celebrated youth creativity and climate action.
With their bundles, they have undertaken work experimenting with field recordings, ambient textures, and turning everyday sounds into powerful compositions.
The Workshops
Three online workshops were held between July and September 2025, exploring topics that are of great relevance to EarthSonic’s mission to distill big complicated data, and reach young people’s hearts and minds, inspiring clear calls to action and unifying a movement to tackle climate change. Other content was more specifically relevant to the work of the EarthSonic Futures participants, including practical information and guidance relating to sound recording.
1. Climate change, biodiversity, and the environmental movement
The first workshop explored the history of both human and non-human-induced climate change on Earth, as well as the deep interconnections between climate change and biodiversity loss – and therefore the potential of interconnected solutions.
We examined ecologically advanced cultures from around the world, including Indigenous cultures.
Finally, we considered how the Industrial Revolution gave rise to the modern environmental movement, and discussed the paradoxes of industrial capitalism: on the one hand, delivering significant improvements in health and quality of life; on the other, driving overwhelming environmental and cultural destruction. A case study focused on the devastation of vast buffalo herds and Native communities in North America by European colonisers in the 1800s.
2. Sound recording and archiving
In the second workshop, we listened to the first-ever recording of a human voice and traced the early history of sound recording. We explored how innovations in this field led to the archiving of sound and the documentation of disappearing cultural heritage through the work of figures such as Alice Cunningham Fletcher, Cecil Sharp, Alan Lomax, and Zora Neale Hurston.
Participants also learned about best practice in sound archiving and metadata collection, and we examined the different eras of sound recording, from the acoustic to the digital.
We then turned to the development of acoustic ecology, focusing on the work of Murray Schafer and Bernie Krause, before exploring practical and technical considerations for recording nature soundscapes and taking good care of sound recording equipment.
3. Music and environmental activism
The final workshop examined the history of music and environmental activism. We listened to some of the earliest examples and discussed the ‘golden age’ of environmental songs in the early 1970s, which saw the release of influential works by artists such as Joni Mitchell, Marvin Gaye, and Neil Young.
We then considered the different ways musicians can engage with environmental issues through their art, before debating why major artists today appear to produce fewer songs about climate change and the environment.
As a case study, we explored the increasingly current idea of collaborating with nature. We approached this through two lenses, illustrated with musical examples: ‘New Animism’ (and the related ‘Rights of Nature’ movement) and interspecies music-making.
The EarthSonic Futures workshops have been certified by Manchester Metropolitan University